TECHNOLOGY WATCH:

Mummies yield more secrets to a new generation of scanners

By Katharine Ott

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

(MCT)

MILWAUKEE - The patient inside the CT scan didn't have to be reminded to stay still. He hasn't moved in over 2,500 years.

Last week, two mummies from the Milwaukee Public Museum received state-of-the-art computerized tomography, or CT, scans at GE Healthcare in Waukesha, Wisc.

The scans will produce three-dimensional images of the mummies that will help uncover how these ancient Egyptians lived and died.

Researchers also will be able to visualize what the mummies looked like when they were alive and build sculptures of their faces.

[...]

The scans are part of a larger effort by the Akhmim Mummy Studies Consortium to gather images of mummies collected from the Akhmim site in Egypt. The Milwaukee Public Museum is one of the founding members of the consortium, and Lupton is its associate director.

Although not well-known today, Akhmim was an important city in Egypt in ancient times. Hundreds of mummies have been excavated from Akhmim, more than from any other site. So many were found there, in fact, that in the late 1800s the Cairo Museum began selling the mummies. Adolph and Ferdinand Meinecke purchased two mummies, named Djed-Hor and Padi-Heru, in this manner in 1887 and later donated them to the Milwaukee museum.

[...]

Incidentally, a grave from Akhmim produced a Greek codex that contained the Gospel of Peter and substantial portions of 1 Enoch.

(Via Archaeologica News.)